Building Information Modeling (BIM) is a digital representation of physical and functional characteristics of a facility. A BIM is a shared knowledge resource for information about a facility forming a reliable basis for decisions during its life-cycle. In addition to the geometry of a facility, BIM data can also describe further information, such as spatial relationships, light analysis, geographic information, and quantities and properties of building components (e.g., manufacturers' details).
It is known to provide collaborative BIM software tools that enable several users, including ones at geographically remote sites, to work on the same BIM-based project (e.g., building model). An exemplary BIM based project platform is 4BIM, produced by 4Projects. This can allow any project member to review and interact with 3-dimensional building models using a World Wide Web browser. In some instances, it is desirable for one user to manipulate the BIM-based data in a certain way (e.g., modify an image of the facility represented by the data), and for the other users to watch that manipulation substantially in real time, or at least with minimal delay. Conventionally, this type of “screen sharing” involves taking a sequence of snapshots/images of the “master” screen and sending bitmap data representing those to each client over a network, such as the Internet. There are known techniques to reduce the amount of data sent to the devices, such as detecting what has changed since the last image was generated and only sending that portion of the image, but such conventional techniques still ultimately rely on streaming image data at a rate of something like 10 per second minimum (and in many cases 24/25/30 per second). Moreover, it may be desirable for the users to view other information pertaining to building models, such as COBie data corresponding to specific objects within the model. However, 4BIM does not provide such functionality. Therefore, the users may have to access additional programs locally or remotely to facilitate viewing of other related data, such as COBie data, decreasing the data management efficiency of the users. In some cases, a user may have to use multiple computing devices to enable access to a building model as well as COBie data.